#3 What is going on with Rusev?
We have not seen Rusev on SmackDown since he was traded over in the Superstar Shake-Up and the longer this goes on, the more suspicious it gets.
At first, it seemed like a stall tactic just to get to the point where he was cleared to return to action from his injuries, but now it seems like there may be issues on a creative side as well.
So far, all that has happened is Rusev threatening that he wouldn’t show up until Shane McMahon granted him a WWE Championship match at Money in the Bank. That felt self-explanatory and it seemed as though it would lead up to this declaration being signed off on, where Rusev would start building momentum toward his match.
Then, he popped up a second time to specifically address things once more, only to not make the appearance he was outright said to do. Why would WWE bother having him cut a promo about how he’d speak again on the issue only to pull it from the show?
Did they operate on the principle of shooting first and asking questions later before realising they had no actual plan of what to do with him if he did appear on SmackDown? Was there a plan in place that they pulled because they decided to go in a different direction?
My best guess is that they didn’t realise it would be a mistake to have him officially declared the No. 1 contender until after Backlash, so they jumped the gun and then pulled his appearance, hoping to just wait an extra week.
With Rusev being granted a title opportunity, it would somewhat spoil the match between Randy Orton and Jinder Mahal, as nobody would anticipate Rusev facing Mahal rather than Orton, so in order to keep this event’s match more of a mystery, WWE probably held off on the announcement.
If Rusev doesn’t make an appearance on the May 23rd edition of SmackDown where at that point he should be named the next challenger for Randy Orton’s title, then even more questions will pop up about what the WWE Championship match at Money in the Bank will turn out to be.
